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Lesson Info

Color Management and Profiles

Um, and then at the bottom. This is the most important thing. This is print color management, and what we're gonna do is we need to make sure that we're choosing the proper paper and that we're putting a profile in it. On a profile is a definition of color, and every paper has a profile, and every printer has a profile on. Every monitor has a profile, so you need to make sure that you have profiled your monitor. And if you haven't profiled your monitor, you need to get a monitor. Profiler X right makes really great profilers. There's one called The Color Monkey that's a little less expensive and slower, but it's great. And then there's one that's faster, more professional. Andi. It's called the I one display pro. I think there's a I want to space I one display pro plus is what is the latest one, but either of them are fine. Just go to X right on and buy a profiler and and you're gonna calibrate your monitor and it's going to install a profile in your system. And that way your system kn...

ows what the definitions of color that you're seeing. Are it knows what red is red. It knows what it looks like. Then that profile needs to talk to the printer. So the computer looks at what you're looking at on your monitor, looks at the printer and says, What kind of printer colors or you're going to send out? And it also looks at a paper profile that tells the printer. So the printer and the paper need to get together and say, What does the color look like when we printed on this paper? And then it shares all of that data with the computer and the computer then tries to match all that data up and say I if I'm looking at this color and it looks like this on the monitor, what do I have to do mathematically to the, uh, the data in order to make it look the same on the printer and on this particular paper, that's what you're doing. So you have tohave a profile for that paper. Now ex right makes in another profiler, so it's ah, little over around $1000 for a paper profiler, which is a great tool, and you can profile your own paper and it will be dead on accurate, and every print will be perfect. But if you don't want to spend money on a paper profiler because you're just getting started or because you only print once in a while or you don't need to be that accurate, you can get a paper profile for every piece of paper that cans on makes that cannon makes that, uh, uh, Hannah mule makes that all of them make profiles based on that printer, whatever printer using. So if I go back to the website for canceling at the very bottom, once I've checked all the papers that I own, I can click on download, and when I click on that download, it's going to give me a paper profile. I'm gonna show this in my finder, and it downloads this paper profile right here. Double click that it unzips it. And now I've got a folder with some pdf instructions and what's called an icy sea profile. That profile right there is the computation that gets they can't that my particular canon printer here and that paper put them together. And that's the profile that specifically tells my computer how to match the monitor. How to match the print to the monitor. All right, so and never try and go the opposite way. Don't print out a print and then trying to just over here you need to profile the system. And if you profile it correctly, whatever you're seeing on your monitor will print on the paper. If you If you're not getting that, you're not doing it right. Start over. So we're gonna take this download here, and we're going to put it in the right place. So follow me on this because this is a little bit tricky. So we're going to make a new folder here in a new window, and we're going to go find where that exists on a Mac. In order to get into the system, you have to go to the system library and you have to go up to the go menu and you have to hold down the option of the bulky so that the library shows up and then I click on library. That library area has two different areas that you can put a printer profile. You can either go straight into the color sink area and put it in this profile folder or you can go and and that will make that profile available everywhere. Or you can go into applications, support adobe, and then go to light room an inside of light room. There is a color profiles folder as well. And that color profiles folder. If I put this profile right here in here, I will now have access to that piece of that profile for that particular paper on that particular printer. So let's go back to light room. And I need to I need to quit light room and start up again so that it really looks for those papers. Eso I'm in a quit light room really quickly. So, yes, I want to quit. I'll skip the backup this time. Um, and now I'm just gonna reopen light room. And once I've reopened light room, um, I'll be right back in the print module again with that same image ready to print, and I'm going to go here. I've got all of my settings still set, and I'm going to go down to the bottom here. I want to print at 300 peopie I That's good. Print sharpening standard for Matt paper so you can choose glossy or matte printing on Matt paper. So if I sharpen it, I need to sharpen it. For Matt Paper, 16 bit output means it's going to try and send as much data as it has to the printer. If you go to eight bit output, it's so if you turn this off, it's gonna have less information going to the printers. So leave it on. If you have a printer that's capable of that and then color management, we're not going to manage by the printer. We're going to manage by our specific, um, are specific paper type. And so this one. See how this one says, media setting other fine paper. That's the one for the Cannon Pro 10. You can see that it says can and pro 10 right here, and this one is the one for my Canon Pro 1000. So I'm gonna click on that, and that's going to adjust it so that it's perfectly suited for that paper on that printer. Once I'm done with that, all I have to do is hit the print button, and once I had the print button, it's gonna send it away to the printer. The printer manages everything, and we're going to get the print back now in order to save time. I've already done that for you, and so I have a print for us to look at. So let me grab that off the printer. So we're looking at that print and we're looking at the print on the screen and you can see that they are dead on accurate like they look beautiful together. There's no I'm looking at both, and I don't see any difference. I mean, there's always a slight difference because, ah, monitor is backlit. And so it glows a little bit. Whereas paper doesn't, it's reflective, so there's gotta be some difference. It can't look exactly the same, especially when you're looking at a glossy monitor, which is a horrible thing. I don't know why Mac has glossy monitors, but if they do so so it's always gonna be a little different. But the colors, the tones, everything is accurate and perfect, and it's exactly what I expected to see when I got this print. Furthermore, if when you're looking at your prints, if you want to see what it's going to look like before you print it, you can always go to the develop module looking at that same image, and you can go into the top area here, pull down the hissed, a gram looking right here, and and what you want to do is at the very bottom. There's a thing called. We set this down at the very bottom. Here there's a thing called soft proofing, and when I click on soft proving it shows me a piece of paper and then right up here under the hissed a gram is what kind of profile do I want to use? So if I click on it and I choose that rag paper and then I scroll back out, I will see exactly what it looks like on that rag paper. In fact, the white here gets a little bit more dingy because it's actual paperwhite rather than a screen white. And as I look at the two now, they really look very similar because it's trying to simulate the softness of the paper. It's simulating the a little bit of warmth to the paper and its simulating the the fact that it doesn't quite glow as much as a screen close. It's a fantastic way to see. What is this gonna look like before I print it? And I could make some adjustments based on that print. So if I'm gonna print something with a printer away from not not a printer in my house but a printer at, say, White House custom color, I can always go in here. Click on this, and I can look for other papers. If I install one of their paper profiles, say, for a metallic print, I can see what it's going to look like on a metallic piece of paper. So these profiles air very useful. So if I I want to see what it's gonna look like on a pro luster paper canon, click on it and you saw a shift. There's a shift in kind of the oranges. I'll go back so that we can see that shift again and see that this the paper I'm using, I think, is better than that pro luster paper for showing that warmth in the background. Their premium Matt paper, though, is quite nice, but it actually thins out the blacks a little bit more. Whereas this, uh, Kant's on paper has a better way of holding those blacks, and I can see here that it's that's ringing, true that I've got nice blacks inside of the shadows. So when you look at these papers and I and I printed up a whole bunch of these things, but they all just look fantastic, like here's Here's another shot of the canal and I'll compare that and it just looks. It looks right. It's perfect. And if I want to go to the next print, let's see what else I printed. Oh, I printed this one. So let's let's look at a black and white print. It's actually got a little bit of a color tone to it, so but the color tone is accurate. I'm looking at the color tone, and this color tone matches that color tone. And that's oftentimes that's the hardest thing to do. When you're printing to a printer at your home is when you print like a C p a tone. The sea Peotone doesn't show up, correct, and this is dead on accurate, and it's because I'm using a paper profile and I'm putting it in the system so that when I print the print looks just like it does on the actual computer when I printed it. So So we have and I just really love printing. They're so nice and, ah, it's just a It's a wonderful way to look at an image. And I think in today's age, we've gotten to the point where we deliver too much digital stuff and we don't really show our clients what beauty they could really have in a physical item. Um, and some people on Li like digital things. But, man, you'd be surprised at how many clients love a simple print as a gift, especially when that parent has them in it. So I would suggest I highly recommend the idea of printing either whether it's a book through blurb or whether it's a print out of your own home or whether it's sending in a way to a professional printer. I highly suggest printing, but when you print, make sure that you're downloading whatever profile you need for that paper so that you know exactly what that prints gonna look like before you ever print it. And that's how you print inside of light room